Page 28 - Studio International - June 1970

Buckminster merely to shower him with verbal napalm. to be done that nobody else is attending to, and that
When I came out of the Caxton Hall, I felt I have experience that tells me I know how to solve
Fuller: a that as usual he had been radiating something it and I must commit myself then to doing the things
that are going to help man to be a success. Most
like pure love to his eager young audience —
`self-love' snapped an elderly matron, brist- people were attending to very narrow things; it really
personal ling with indignation. There is clearly a need forced me into employing the biggest pattern-
for some kind of critical assessment. comprehending capability with which we are all
assessment At this point I had better declare myself as a born'.
That same year he decided that conflicts in his
Bucky addict fed up with these extreme res-
ponses, making a humble attempt to begin to own life arose through the misuse of words—so
fill that critical vacuum, beginning with for two years he stopped using them. He didn't
John Donat Bucky's favourite description of himself: speak again until he was sure that what he
`I am very fortunate in being an average healthy said was what he wanted to say and came
human being'. from his own experience and was not the par-
Healthy he certainly is, spry and agile men- roted and unconfirmed experience of others.
tally and physically for all his seventy-five `All this was pretty difficult for my wife because we
years, very much slimmer than he used to be, were in Chicago and didn't have any money. We had
maintaining an astonishingly high perform- an apartment in the least expensive fireproof tenement
ance on a diet of steak, salad, fruit and plain I could find, because we did have our baby. I really
tea. But average? How many average human did stop all sounds...'
beings have kept on file every in-coming and Average?
out-going written communication for a life- It is hard to imagine the intellectual integrity
time ? Fuller started what he calls his `chrono- of a man who saw that something needed to be
file' in 1917. He presented it to the Morris done and could put his family in Coventry for
Library at Southern Illinois University in two years in order to do it.
1960-250 volumes containing some 80,000 Fuller had a non-conformist New England
items bound in chronological order: background. His aunt, Margaret Fuller, was
`The first important regenerative effect upon me of a close friend of Thoreau and Emerson but
keeping this active chronological record was that I differed from them in one profound respect:
learned to "see myself" as others might see me. `She alone seems not only to have been aware of the
Secondly, it persuaded me ten years after its inception looming significance of industrialisation, but also to
to start my life as nearly "anew" as it is humanly have hailed and welcomed it as it came from England
possible to do. Thirdly, it persuaded me to dedicate to impinge upon America'.
my life to others instead of to myself, not on an She also foresaw the cross-breeding effect that
It seems there's no sitting on the fence so far as altruistic basis but because the chronofiled first thirty- the new mobility would bring, and anticipated
Richard Buckminster Fuller is concerned; you two years of my life clearly demonstrated that I was Fuller's own prediction of the future cross-
either love him or loathe him, revere him or positively effective in producing wealth only when I bred world-man. Race, he says, is a product
denounce him. You are either addicted to his was dedicated to others. Further chronofile observa- of Geography. With world mobility it will
ideas or allergic to them. 'Genius to anyone tion then showed that the larger the number for whom cease to exist. So, for him, racial discrimina-
under thirty, indecipherable madman to a lot I worked the more positively effective I became. Thus tion is simply a matter of ignorance; as a
of people over forty' was Design Magazine's it became obvious through the chronofile that if I problem it simply doesn't exist.
brisk summary of this odd state of affairs worked for all humanity I would be optimally effec- This over-view of mankind that ignores local
where there is virtually no corpus of serious tive' . immediate issues and comprehends only the
critical response either to the man or to his Average? global-scale invisible patterns of evolution, is
ideas. Starting life 'anew' was not a simple matter of what makes so much of what he says remote
The anonymous author of an unofficial pro- turning over a new leaf. He resolved to stop from everyday experience: the ultimate truth
gramme for Fuller's talk at the Caxton Hall earning a living: of his forward vision that mobility will eva-
last March, welcomed the audience to the `I said in 1927 I'm going to give up forever this porate racial differences is small consolation to
Buckminster Führer show and seemed to concept of proving my right to life. I'm going to find a riot-torn community in Detriot or to a Bantu
imagine that it was constructive criticism out what it is that I've experienced, that I see needs in South Africa, let alone to Enoch Powell's

Contributors JOSEPH KOSUTH lives and works in New York. He is the is as follows: Objects as Icons—System of Iconography II:
American editor of Art-Language. His three-part article Three-way Plug, Geometric Mouse, Good Humour Bar, Light
to this issue `Art after philosophy' was published in the October, Switches and Lipstick on Caterpillar Tracks. 1970. 22 x
November and December 1969 issues of Studio Interna- 15 in. Pencil and coloured pencil. Coll: The artist.
tional. His retrospective at the Tate Gallery has previously
been shown at the Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf and the
JONATHAN BENTHALL is acting as advisor to the Institute Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and is a selection from
of Contemporary Arts for an exhibition of Dr Hans the show which was originally at the Museum of Modern
Jenny's work on vibrations and periodicity, scheduled Art, New York.
for six weeks from June 10. (See Studio International,
November 1969) BARBARA ROSE, the American critic, has contributed to
many journals, including Art Forum. Among her publi-
CLAES OLDENBURG writes of his cover design: 'The cations is American Art since 1900.
JOHN DONAT, architect-turned-photographer and author, drawing is self-explanatory: these objects have attained
edited the World Architecture series for Studio Vista and a status of demi-gods in my work, producing off-spring ANNE SEYMOUR organized the exhibition 'Drawing
produced Man-Made World film-strips for the RIBA. in the disguise of other objects. The family relation of towards painting 2' for the Arts Council and is at
He has made many radio and television programmes on my subjects becomes evident. Drawings in this manner present working on a book about Bernard Cohen for
environmental subjects, including two about Buck- attempt to establish a lineage, binding my choices Penguin Books.
minster Fuller. together into a "house".' The full title of this drawing